The reason we have been excluded from Google’s index is several mirror sites that automatically copy and republish our content have sprung up. In the past there was only one such mirror site which is Wesley Elsberry’s at
http://antievolution.org/buud/
To address this I am going to post a copyright message at the bottom of our webpage saying that all content here is copyright and may not be reproduced without permission. I will then explicitely warn Wesley Elsberry and other mirrors that they are in violation of the law and will copy the warning mail to the abuse address of their respective ISPs that I expect the violations to end immediately.
I will also undertake the task of modifying our blog software so that a brief copyright message is included on all articles and all comments so that automatic republishing will also reproduce the copyright notice.
If that doesn’t work I will discuss with Professor Dembski the possibility of prosecution. Since one cannot draw blood from a turnip this may or may not be financially advisable although the thought of bankrupting Wesley Elsberry is appealing enough in its own right so that I may underwrite that personally just for the principle.
As well, I have tentatively prepared the following for a reinclusion request with Google
Several websites not under our control have mirrored our content without our permission. We are a blog with strictly enforced moderation rules for commenters. These other websites are mirroring our content so that they may comment on it without moderation.
This has been going on for some time with the website antievolution.org being the only mirror I knew of at http://antievolution.org/buud/
These sites are using RSS feeds to mirror us.
I was unaware that their abuse of RSS feeds could cause us to be in violation of Google quality guidelines.
I think it’s unfair to our many legitimate users of RSS feeds to disable RSS. I have in the past considered using IP blocks to disable the mirrors but determined that some of the sites have dynamic IPs which would require me to block whole domains which would also include legitimate users of those domains. Also, with antievolution.org were I to IP block it we would no longer be able to use trackbacks with pandasthumb.com because it is on the same server IP as antievolution.org.
Here is what I have now done to comply with Google Quality Guidelines:
1) added IP blocks to known mirror sites
2) disabled rss feeds
3) added explicit copyright messages to all our content and reported violations as abuse to the ISP hosting the mirror sitesIt is my hope that once the mirrors have been shut down I will be able to lift the IP blocks and reenable RSS feeds. Once again I wish to stress it is not the fault or intent or wish that uncommondescent’s content be duplicated.
Wesley, I know this will reach you. You are hereby explicitely put on notice that BUUD is illegally republishing our content which is protected by implicit copyright already and your actions have caused substantial real damages to uncommondescent.com, its owners, and content contributors. You will shut down BUUD immediately to ameliorate these damages.